All posts tagged antisemitism

Parsons The New School for Design has invited fashion designer John Galliano to teach a master class, the school confirmed Wednesday.

The British couturier has kept a low profile since his 2011 anti-Semitic rant that resulted in a conviction in France and ended his 15-year tenure at Dior. Earlier this year, Galliano collaborated with Oscar de la Renta, one step in a cautious rehabilitation of the designer’s image.

“The planned master class with John Galliano will be a dynamic and intimate opportunity for our students to learn from an immensely talented designer. We believe that over the past two years, Mr. Galliano has demonstrated a serious intent to make amends for his past actions, and as part of this workshop, Parsons students will have the opportunity to engage in a frank conversation with Mr. Galliano about the challenges and complications of leading a design house in the 21st century” the school said in a statement. Read More »

In his 1939 elegy for W. B. Yeats, trying tacitly to pardon the Irish Nobel Laureate’s flirtations with Fascism at the end of his life, W. H. Auden coined a commonplace: “poetry makes nothing happen.” In the past twenty-four hours, however, Günter Grass has demonstrated that a German Nobel Laureate can cause quite a stir if he writes a poem attacking Israel. Especially if he once served in the Waffen-SS.

On Wednesday morning, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a leading German daily based in Munich, ran a poem by Grass, the author of the 1959 novel “The Tin Drum,” on the front page of an inside section of the paper. The title, “Was gesagt werden muss,” is colloquial as well as exhortatory. Literally “What has to be said,” it also has a sense of the English, “Well, somebody’s gotta say it.”

The stanzas that follow, which also appeared in translation in La Repubblica in Italy and El País in Spain, make a series of controversial arguments.

Citing the German government’s recent decision to sell Israel a submarine capable of carrying nuclear warheads as his inspiration, Grass states that an attack could wipe out the Iranian Volk. He calls Israel to accept international regulation of its weapons and for Iran to do the same with its nuclear plants. Grass thinks that the fears of a nuclear Iran are mostly unfounded–or, at least, grossly exaggerated, and says so in the poem.

Some of these, at least, are fighting words. But Grass’ real provocation is less to demand this or that specific policy change, than to argue that a German cannot criticize Israel without being condemned as antisemitic, and that this is unacceptable. Read More »

Two weeks ago, actress and singer Patti LuPone grabbed a cell phone out of the hand of an audience member who was texting during a performance of her current play, "Shows for Days." The bold move led to an outpouring of support from fans fed up with glowing screens. Ms. LuPone gives us her five rules of theater etiquette.